Mosaic Virus and a Practical Treatment

One of the other local nurseries I go to in Wichita, Kansas is a place called Dutch's Greenhouse. I like this place because of the variety of plants that I can choose from. I bought a few Heirloom plants from Dutch's that I had not seen before including a tomato plant that was supposed to get red and green stripes. (It was called the 4th of July or something along that theme.) It started out okay, but then I started to notice that the stems became thin and the leaves curled and looked really distorted.

 (Click the photos for a larger view.) I am not sure that this virus was imported from Dutch's, but I was watching my other plants vigilantly as to see if any other plant had abnormal growth. None of my other plants had this problem and when I went to Google image search tomato viruses and diseases, the virus that closest resembles my tomato plant pictures was the Cucumber Mosaic Virus. Other than not having a way to fix this problem, I watched the plant for a few days and then decided that it would be best to pull it and send it to the closest public landfill. (Mosaic Virus isn't always killed off in a compost pile unless it reaches temperatures of 160 degrees Fahrenheit or above.) I have over 30 tomato plants this year because I am trying a lot of Heirlooms. It seemed that the most reasonable thing to do was to get rid of the problem before it became a problem to the other plants. There are a number of things that may have cause the leave to do this other than the virus including cooler weather. (I think.) However, this was the only tomato plant to look like this so it is possible that the plant had a virus.

The bottom leaves appeared normal and the spots were from the cooler weather (I think.) It totally threw me when the top started to grow out ratty. My whole garden this year has been kick started with Ammonium Sulphate 21-0-0. I used light applications of this about once every two weeks. This is type of salt and it's probably not the best fertilizer to put on your vegetables in heavy concentrations. I usually use it in my compost to break leaves down faster. I was going to use Ammonium Nitrate 34-0-0 (Which is about the next best thing to having access to Chanel No. 82-0-0, AKA-Nh3, Anhydrous Ammonia.) However, I have seen how Ammonium Nitrate can burn spots on lawns, so I opted for the lesser and gradually built up the soil applications every two weeks. Other than buying 13-13-13/17-17-17 I had calcianated lime and bone meal that I added deeper in the soil so that the plants could tap some calcium and at least some 0-10-0 to get some blossoms cranking when the roots tapped it.

*Dutch's Greenhouse doesn't have a website so I can't link it.